Today we had a small earthquake in the Andaman Sea, west of Thailand and east of the Andaman Isles (India). The Andaman Sea is a region of backarc spreading and connects the Sumatra fault (a (strike-slip) sliver fault that accommodates…
Mid Atlantic Ridge Earthquake!
Yesterday (I was busy preparing revisions to a paper that was due, the 5th 18 hr day in a row) there was a large earthquake along a fracture zone (transform plate boundary) near the Mid Atlantic ridge (MAR). Here is…
Redding Earthquakes: 1945-2015
There have not been many earthquakes since 1945 in this region. Below is a map that shows the largest earthquake as a M = 5.4 earthquake from 1998.11.26. Here is the USGS query that I used to create this map.…
Los Angeles: Newport Inglewood Earthquake!
Last night, we had another earthquake on the Newport Inglewood fault (NIF) system. This fault ruptured in 1933, which led to Long Beach adopting the most strict building codes in the nation. Later, these codes were adopted by the state,…
Blanco Fracture Zone: 2000 – 2015 Seismicity Animation
I put together an animation that includes the seismicity from 1/1/2000 until 6/1/2015 for the region near the Blanco fracture zone, with earthquake magnitudes greater than or equal to M = 5.0. The map here shows all these epicenters, with…
Blanco Fracture Zone Earthquakes!
This morning we had three earthquakes related to the Blanco fracture zone, a transform (shear) plate boundary. These earthquakes occurred quite a bit north of the bathymetric expression of the BFZ (though the M 5.8 is actually plotting closer to…
Earthquake along the Alaska Penninsula!
We just had an earthquake along the Alaska Peninsula. The magnitude is currently set at 6.7 on the USGS website. The Peninsula is a volcanic arc that forms as a result of the subduction of the Pacific plate beneath the…
Gorda earthquake triggered a Gorda earthquake?
We just had an earthquake along the nodal plane of the Gorda plate earthquake earlier today. Here is the USGS web page for the Gorda M = 4.3 earthquake and here is the USGS web page for the Gorda plate…
Gorda plate earthquake: 2010 zone strikes again
Early this morning we had a small rumbler offshore of northern California, generally in the same location as the 2010.01.10 earthquake. I remember the 2010 earthquake very well as the ground shaking lasted over 20 seconds in Manila. Here is…
Mid Atlantic Ridge Plate Boundary
In the past week, there have been a few earthquakes along the Mid Atlantic Ridge (MAR) and some associated fracture zones. The Mid Atlantic Ridge is a divergent plate boundary. As the plates move apart, the asthenosphere is decompressed and…